“The future ain’t what it used to be.”

-Yogi Berra

  • 98 Posts
  • 6.57K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 29th, 2023

help-circle












  • They’re idiots

    They’re idiots, or… they are insincere.

    The reality that people who vote Democrat loyally, especially white, middle income, NPR listening, card carrying liberals, need to come to terms with is this:

    The Democratic party doesn’t work for you.

    The leadership of the Democratic party, it’s party managers, the ones who hold real power: they do not share your same interests. It’s always been performative. The vast majority of Democrats never meant any of it. The few that do are refused any real leadership or power. Every time they’ve had the votes to do something, anything, there is always a technical or procedural excuse. And when they now the thing can’t pass, they use the opportunity to show their bonafide: precisely when it has no cost. The current political situation were in would be impossible without the weakness and persistent cuckoldry coming from the Democratic party.

    It’s a waste of time to invest further in the Democratic party. They were never going to come to your rescue, now less than ever when they are most needed. American leftist already knows this, it’s time for the American liberal to develop a sense of shame at their unwillingness to oppose the baseless, performative bullshit they’ve come to accept as politics from the DNC.

    We need a new political project. The DNC is cooked.








  • 1.5 people died during hurricane Katrina.

    For every billion in a billionaires hands, how many lives are lost? It can probably be quantified.

    Using this paper, we can calculate a number of deaths per megawatt of energy consumed (using global averages). If the planet consumes 17,000 TWh annually, and there are 10 million deaths annually, thats about 0.0006 deaths per MWh.

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33577774/

    Just quick and dirty numbers but from some lazy searching the following companies used…

    Samsung: Nearly 30 TWh in 2023. Google: Approximately 25 TWh in 2023. Microsoft: Around 23.5 TWh in 2023.

    Samsung:
    

    30,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=18,000 deaths

    Google:
    

    24,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=14,400 deaths

    Microsoft:
    

    24,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=14,400 deaths

    Now these big tech companies don’t all use fossil fuels, but we’re just trying to get into a ball park… so lets continue as if they had used all fossil fuels… Samsung:

    18,000 deaths/ 17.92 billion USD≈1,004 deaths per billion USD

    Google (Alphabet):
    

    14,400 deaths/ 94.2 billion USD≈153 deaths per billion USD

    Microsoft:
    

    14,400 deaths/ 69.02 billion USD≈209 deaths per billion USD

    So we can estimate some where between maybe 100 and 1000 deaths per billion dollars for these tech companies. Now of course how you make those billions matters (maybe). For example, we can do the same thing with Exxon mobile, which represents 3.7% of global emissions. 10,200,000 deaths×0.037≈377,400 deaths. 377,400/ 37 billion, Exxons 2024 profits gives us 11,200 deaths per billion.

    We can of course also divide this out to get to about how much profit is generated before a single person dies. Maybe this could be considered the lower limit where profit extraction should be considered criminal

    In the lower end scenario, it would be at between 6.5 million dollars and one million dollars in profit extraction would relate to at least 1 lost life. Obviously extremely rough numbers, but if we look at some one like Musk, allegedly worth 500 billion, that would relate to between 100k and 500k deaths their profit extraction is directly responsible for.

    And of course this is only from particulate matter emissions from emissions. There are many, many other externalizes not quantified here. It also isn’t fully representative because, yes, many companies do purchase renewables (Amazon claims to be renewable) but this probably gets us close enough to start having a more serious dialogue about the relationship between extractive capitalism and consequences to human life. Based on these back of the napkins, it would seem like every billionaire should be considered responsible for, at a minimum, at least one lost life.

    And to put that into Hurricane terms, Elon Musk represents around 300 hurricane Katrinas.